Bloodline: An Edge of Your Seat Crime Thriller

Prologue

1986

He looked down at the lifeless body on the floor.

Seconds turned to minutes as he stood staring in disbelief at the blood pooling all around the dead man’s head.

He hadn’t intended it to end like this. It was just meant to be a conversation, tell him that he knew what he had done. What happened was an accident… he hadn’t intended for him to be hit like that… he hadn’t meant for him to die; he’d just wanted to talk to him.

It was a moment’s insanity, a slip, a loss of control, a lashing out. But there was nothing he could do about it now; the man was dead. Stone cold dead.

Hastily, he gathered himself and his thoughts together. But what to do now? Nobody would believe that it had been unintentional… under the circumstances. He’d looked down at the lifeless form on the floor and panicked. What to do with the body? Where to put him? Then he thought, Yes, that’s it! What a great idea! Nobody will find him by the mine in a while, not with the strike going on. Nobody has any idea how long it would last.

He’d dump him down by the mine. Yes, that was the best thing to do… under the circumstances.

The strike had divided families, torn some apart even, and many were at each other’s throats. This would look like someone had taken their grievance too far. It would be seen as frustration about jobs in jeopardy.

Somebody would get the blame for it for sure. But not him. Not his family. He’d make sure of that.

Present day

He stood watching them from the safety of a doorway across the road from the café, hands gripped into tight fists.

He saw her laughing, holding his hand. What the hell did she see in him? If she was going to have an affair she could at least have had the decency to find someone worthy, somebody respectable, not this scruffy-looking bastard sitting opposite her. He looked dishevelled, like he hadn’t had a bath in a week.

But then maybe he was mistaken, jumping to conclusions, seeing something that wasn’t there? Perhaps there was a perfectly good explanation.

Then she partially rose and leaned her upper body across the table, giving him a gentle peck on the cheek. And that was when the blood in his veins rose to boiling point. No, it couldn’t be anything other than what he was seeing. She was being unfaithful to him, and he couldn’t have that now, could he?

Chapter 1

The young boy tugged at his mother’s arm. ‘There’s something wrong with that man,’ he said, pointing at the slumped figure in the doorway.

His mother quickly looked then she grabbed her son by the arm and pulled him along. ‘Don’t look at him, Daniel,’ she said, trying to get both her son and her shopping back to the car as quickly as she could. She couldn’t be stopping to look at a homeless man in a doorway; not today, not ever. Two hours in town trying to find her son a new pair of shoes for school had been an absolute nightmare, then she had to do the food shopping after that. And she’d had a row with somebody in the shop. It hadn’t been a very good morning; not a good morning at all.

‘But, Mummy–’

‘Daniel, be quiet!’ She was almost shouting now, her patience all but gone, nerves shredded, and very close to breaking point. ‘Just leave the man alone and come on.’

‘But he’s–’

‘What did I tell you!’

Her outburst caused everybody to stop and look at her. Shouting at her little boy like that; what sort of mother was she? She could see the eyes of the passers-by staring at her, heard them talking about her, and her son started crying.

Then she heard a woman say, ‘Somebody call an ambulance!’ Everyone was gathering around the doorway of the closed-down shop where the homeless man was lying prone. His hoodie had been pulled down on his face when she’d quickly glanced at him before but now it had slipped to one side and she could see that his face was almost blue. As all the attention was now off her and on this poor lost soul, she made a quick getaway and hurried on her way, telling her son not to look back – no matter what.

Detective Inspector Joe Burton and Detective Sergeant Sally Fielding received the call to go to the scene at 12.30pm. Parking up on the High Street they saw that the white tent had already been set up and two uniformed police officers stood guard by the blue-and-white tape that surrounded it, keeping the crowd of sightseers at bay. Funny how death and disaster always attracted onlookers. They flashed their cards to one of the uniforms and he lifted up the tape to let them in.

Medical examiner Ben Adamson was crouched over the body and looked up when he heard the sound of new people arriving on the scene.

‘Morning, Ben,’ Joe Burton greeted him. ‘What do we have today?’ His black police notebook already out, ready for notes.

‘Good morning, Joe, Sally.’ Adamson nodded to both of them and rose up from his kneeling position and pulled his face mask down.

Adamson was a man in his early fifties. He had been chief medical examiner at the city’s coroner’s office for just over three years. Prior to that he had worked in mortuary services in two of London’s major hospitals, the Royal London Hospital and King’s College Hospital, and also in Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, until he’d been offered the chance to run a department of his own.

‘Homeless?’ Burton asked looking at the deceased man on the ground. He didn’t look too old, in his mid-thirties perhaps, and he was dressed in clothing Burton might have expected a homeless person to be wearing: an oversized coat, a pair of jeans that had seen better days, a woollen jumper peeping out beneath a hoodie, no shirt, and a pair of badly worn trainers. Apart from the coat, which was comparatively unmarked, there was blood on the rest of his clothing. How had nobody seen all that blood before now? Was it just that people hadn’t bothered to look at him?

‘More than a case of hypothermia, as you can see,’ Adamson said stepping away from the body so that the officers could take a look at him.

‘Looks like he was killed somewhere else and dumped here in the doorway.’

‘Definitely killed then?’ Fielding asked, wondering if his injuries may have been due to an accident of some sort, or even a fight. She knew that there was a lot of aggression directed towards rough sleepers living on the streets, although she couldn’t understand why this was. Things were bad enough without some yob coming along and having a go. ‘Any ideas how?’

‘Looks like a stabbing,’ the medical examiner told her, ‘but I’ll be able to tell you more as soon as I get him back to the lab for the post-mortem.’

Burton frowned. ‘Do you think it’s murder then, Ben?’

‘He has four wounds on him; they look like knife wounds to me, so I don’t think that’s an accident somehow. Unless, that is, somebody slipped and happened to fall on him when they had a knife in their hand, then did the same thing three more times. Whoops… sorry… my bad.’ Adamson was renowned for his dry sense of humour. Perhaps it was the nature of the job; having to deal with dead bodies all day long could have a profound effect upon someone, especially when murder was involved, unless they relieved the tension by finding black humour in it. It was a skill Adamson had definitely mastered over the years.

Burton turned to Fielding. ‘Get DC Wayman and DC Francis to go around all the shelters and food banks, and show people living on the streets his photo, too.’

‘Okay, boss,’ she said already starting to dial the station on her phone to give the two detective constables their instructions.

‘Any ID on him?’ Burton asked, already sensing that there might not be.

‘Not that I can see. But,’ Adamson said turning to face the detective, suddenly becoming more serious, ‘I’ve got a funny feeling about this one.’

‘In what way?’

‘It’s just a gut feeling, but I don’t really think that this man is what he seems.’

‘Why’s that then?’ Fielding asked, re-joining them after her phone calls.

‘Again, I’ll be able to tell you better during the autopsy.’ He checked his watch. ‘Let’s see. It’s coming up to one o’clock now and I have two already booked in, so I’ll pencil it in for, shall we say, five?’

Burton nodded and cast a glance in Fielding’s direction. He knew that she hated autopsies. But as attending officers on the scene they had no alternative but to go along to it. A necessary professional requisite. The sooner they knew how the victim had died the sooner they would know what weapon to look for. Fielding’s face dropped, which didn’t go unnoticed by the medical examiner.

‘If I were you,’ he laughed gently, ‘I wouldn’t have your tea until after you’ve been. You know how messy these things can get!’

It wasn’t just the cutting up that disturbed Fielding, but that someone had been so aggrieved with another human being that they’d had the audacity to take their life away from them. That was what really bothered her about it. A sad waste of another person’s existence, and for what? Greed, revenge, money, sex… all the usual ugly suspects.

While Fielding was deep in contemplation and dread, the scene of crime team began to pack up all their belongings and samples to get everything back to the lab as soon as they could. As Adamson clicked shut his metal case, he said that he’d see the two detectives later that afternoon and bade them farewell.

As everything was now in motion, it seemed to Burton and Fielding that the four hours until the autopsy would be well spent on the search. So they headed back to the station to get the squad room prepared for the investigation. The man may have been living on the streets but he didn’t deserve to die; even if he hadn’t been murdered it was no place for a human being to meet their end, cold and alone. Falling on hard times wasn’t a crime, but the person or persons who’d killed him had committed one, and Burton vowed to resolve it and get justice for this poor lad.

However, before reaching the station they stopped off at their favourite watering hole near Northampton Road to grab a bite of lunch. They ordered a double espresso latte, a cappuccino and two toasted sandwiches at the drive-through Costa. They opted to have their lunch in the car park so they could look at the crime scene photographs away from the gaze of curious public eyes. These were not pictures they could spread out across a table at a restaurant.

Chapter 2

After lunch, Burton went up to have a word with his DCI, Elizabeth Ambleton, while Fielding prepared the squad room for what was about to come. He knocked on the door, waited for a response then entered when she called for him to come in.

‘Sit down, Joe,’ she said indicating the seat across the desk from her. She looked haggard, drawn, like she had the weight of the world upon her shoulders, which Burton knew she had. Well, perhaps not the world, but her own family at least.

Her youngest son Charlie had recently fallen in with a bad crowd, dropped out of university, and had found himself on the wrong side of the law. Frustrating for her and husband, Alistair, even more so when considering both their positions on the force; but they had managed to get Charlie the help he so desperately needed, and he was currently in a residential rehab centre in Salford.

It was hoped that the treatment he’d get there would lead to Charlie making a full and complete recovery, and finding his way onto a better path. Both Ambleton and her husband were hopeful, but the whole situation had taken its toll on them.

Burton felt sorry for her. He had known her for a long time now, and had been her detective sergeant when she was his DI prior to her promotion. She was a good person, a lovely person, and neither she nor her husband had deserved this. They just didn’t see it coming, any of it. Who could have? As far as they knew Charlie was enjoying his life at uni. His phone calls had always been upbeat and hopeful. It was when he’d stopped calling and they couldn’t reach him by phone that they began to think that things weren’t quite as they should be, and they’d paid him a surprise visit one weekend. What they found was a son who was a shadow of his former self, and they’d taken him out of university there and then and found a place for him in the centre.

DCI Ambleton hadn’t been the same person after that, constantly worrying about him and how they’d failed him. In truth though, they hadn’t failed him, as they’d stepped in and taken over when he’d needed it the most. Burton hoped that the boy realised that.

‘What have we got?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ he lamented, already realising that this was going to be an emotionally difficult case, ‘we were called to the High Street this morning where the body of a man was found in the doorway of a closed shop. The medical examiner, Ben Adamson, was there and had already taken a look at the body by the time we arrived on the scene. Looked to us like a homeless man had been killed, stabbed, and moved there from somewhere else, but Ben seems to think that there’s more to it.’

‘Like what?’

‘All he could say to us was that he thought that it wasn’t as it seemed,’ Burton told her.

‘Ah, that’s interesting. Do you think he was meaning that he wasn’t homeless then?’

‘Not sure,’ Burton admitted, ‘but Fielding and I have an appointment at the autopsy at five o’clock.’

Ambleton shook her head. ‘Poor Fielding,’ she said, already aware of her aversion to these things.

‘Yes, but she still goes, boss.’

‘That she does,’ the DCI agreed. ‘Quite the trooper is our Sally Fielding.’

‘Too true she is,’ he agreed, adding, ‘I’ve also got two detective constables checking out homeless shelters, food banks and anywhere else this man may have been to or has been staying. They have his photograph and should both be back before five.’

‘Okay, Joe. Let me know the outcome. I’m staying on until seven tonight; the autopsy should be over by then, shouldn’t it?’

‘Will do. Yes, it should.’ Burton rose to leave, promising to return later to update her with the results of the post-mortem, and headed off downstairs to his office.

Reliable as ever, Fielding had everything in order by the time he returned to the squad room. She’d set up the corkboard with their unknown man’s photograph and pictures from the crime scene, and had one of the detective constables, Phillipa Preston, already going through all the missing person files. None had surfaced so far that bore any sort of resemblance to the man in the photograph. DC Simon Banks and his colleague, DC Jack Summers, had been set the task of going through all the CCTV footage from the area.

‘Any news from Wayman or Francis?’ Burton asked examining the board.

‘No, nothing yet; they haven’t been out that long though.’ But at that exact moment, as if on cue, Francis rang her DI.

‘Sir,’ she said to her boss, ‘this is going to be a bigger job than we at first realised.’

‘Why’s that then?’ he asked her.

‘There are more shelters and food banks than Wayman and I could have ever imagined and I don’t think we’re going to get through all of them between us in one day.’

‘Just how many?’ Burton asked looking around the room to assess how many others were available. Preston was working on the missing person files, with Banks and Summers on the CCTV, so one of the two men could be freed up to go if necessary.

‘We got a list from the council offices, and they have around 1,000 temporary accommodation places for single homeless people and rough sleepers. And as for food banks, they also have around 157 listed, but state that there are many more than that set up which aren’t on the official list –